Senate to Vote Monday to Defund Planned Parenthood

In what some conservative leaders are calling a “show vote,” the Senate will hold a vote Monday afternoon to defund Planned Parenthood in the wake of undercover videos showing the organization’s officials engaged in the sale of body parts of aborted babies.

In an email sent to supporters, Ken Cuccinelli II, president of Senate Conservatives Action, wrote:

Today, the U.S. Senate will vote to bring up S. 1881, the Defund Planned Parenthood Act, for debate. Unfortunately, this bill won’t be signed into law even if it manages to get the 60 votes required to overcome a filibuster.

The vote today is a drive-by, show vote.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) scheduled the vote to make it look like he’s serious about this issue before the August recess, but he has no plans to seriously fight for it.

In fact, rather than keeping this issue on the Senate floor this week and elevating the Democrats’ opposition by making them vote on it again and again, he plans to quickly move on to a cybersecurity bill.

Also, rather than threatening to cancel the August break if the bill isn’t passed – something Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) did often – McConnell plans to take the month off while Planned Parenthood uses our tax dollars for abortions.

“The real test is whether [Republicans] will oppose any bill that funds the organization. If they won’t rule out funding it, then they’re just posturing and plan to betray their principles later this year,” Cuccinelli observes.

The Senate legislation provides that taxpayer funds used to support Planned Parenthood would be redirected to other women’s health care facilities that don’t provide abortions.

The legislation states:

(1) State and county health departments, community health centers, hospitals, physicians offices, and other entities currently provide, and will continue to provide, health services to women. Such health services include relevant diagnostic laboratory and radiology services, well-child care, prenatal and postpartum care, immunization, family planning services including contraception, sexually transmitted disease testing, cervical and breast cancer screenings, and referrals.

(2) Many such entities provide services to all persons, regardless of the person’s ability to pay, and provide services in medically underserved areas and to medically underserved populations.

(3) All funds no longer available to Planned Parenthood will continue to be made available to other eligible entities to provide women’s health care services.

Research conducted by the Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI), an affiliate of the Susan B. Anthony List, found that there are 9,170 women’s health care centers that qualify for federal funding (FQHCs) and that do not provide abortion, and 700 Planned Parenthood facilities – 13 to 1.

“FQHCs already serve 21.1 million individuals per year, nearly 8 times the amount that are served at Planned Parenthood (2.8 million),” CLI said in a press release.

Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, performed 327, 653 abortions in 2013.

Additionally, CLI observes that the United States is second worldwide in the number of abortions performed each year.

“If Planned Parenthood were included for comparison, it would rank 6th in the world in number of abortions carried out annually,” the research institute states.

Lila Rose, president and founder of pro-life organization Live Action, noted, in a statement sent to Breitbart News, Planned Parenthood’s continued meme that they provide “women’s healthcare.”

“Planned Parenthood’s current ad campaign is a distraction by the taxpayer subsidized abortion conglomerate,” she states. “The recent investigations show they are profiting from the illegal sale of aborted children’s organs,” Rose said. “Killing children and harvesting their parts is making a sick mockery of authentic women’s healthcare.”

“Defunding Planned Parenthood–a group that doesn’t even provide mammograms or other crucial health screenings–will improve women’s health, allowing the resources to be given to thousands of clinics, facilities, and subsidized medical programs around the country that actually save lives and provide more complete health services for women,”Rose adds.